Andy's Glasses

What we gonna do about refugees? Illegals?? Boat-people who risk their lives to arrive in Dover but really would much prefer to be in Kensington? Who have taken a dice with death to get away from… well, that’s a good question.

But its ok, Suella Braverman and little Rishi have come up with a 3 point plan: send ‘em back, ship ‘em out, fly ‘em to Rwanda. In no particular order. They’re ‘toughing up’ on illegal migrants. You can’t just sail up here and jump the housing list! Get instant care on the NHS!!! Put your dirty little boat-children in our schools!!! What do think this is?? A nice country!! No, our Prime Minister and Home Secretary are here to greet you with a great big, flower-laden, chocolate boxed FUCK RIGHT OFFFFF!!!! As well they should. Rishi and Suella share the true nationalist view of what ‘British’ looks like! How it can trace its ancestry back to King Arthur. George II. Prince Andrew, at very least. Just like they do. Oh. Well, its not about ‘them’, the obvious descendants of recent immigrants to these shores, this is about NOW! Keeping our island safe from the new batch of unworthies queuing up to get in.

My maternal grandparents immigrated from Poland (hmmm… EU passport…). They arrived penniless, with loads of kids (price of condoms was prohibitive in 1900), because they wanted ‘a better life’. Firstly one without pogroms, and then to work hard and do better than they ever could in the ‘mother country’. So this is my dilemma. How can I ever want to close our borders to the persecuted, the threatened and even those just in search of a better life for their children?

Gary Linneker said almost the same thing. Well, almost. He tweeted that England was becoming like Germany in the 1930s. And he said that because, fundamentally, he’s a fucking idiot. And also because he seems to forget that he’s a fucking footballer, and nothing more. I know he played for Spurs and so I love him like a son/father/cretin, but I can complain about my children/parents/cretins, can’t I??? Maybe he should put some of that money that the BBC (ie: ME!!!) throw at him and open his own refugee centre for Albanian drug dealers and Afghani jihadis in his garden? Its big enough.

I would hate to be part of a nation whose doors are closed to those who really need help. I want to welcome people. Just not the convicted rapists, murderers and Whatsappers. We have enough of them in the police force. These new ‘proposals’ will never get through the Supreme Court.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I went to Watford the other night. Because I just ‘neeeeded’ culture and Watford’s the obvious place to find it. Innit? Well it was on Saturday night for a new production of… Merchant of Venice!

So they shipped Shylock over from Venice to… Cable Street, London E1. And during the move he left 17th Century Italy for 20th Century East End slum. And in the transition, Mr Shylock became Mrs Shylock. You can do that with Shakespeare. You can ‘contemporise it’, you can ‘gender reassign it’, you can do, pretty much, what’cha fucking want. It’s a play, it’s a fiction, it therefore has no absolute reality other than how any particular director chooses to interpret it. (According to The Matrix- blessed be it- nothing has an absolute reality anyway, but that’s another conversation). The only thing you can’t do is change the words. Translate them from ‘Shakespeare’ to ‘English’. If you do that its called West Side Story. Not a bad thing, arguably a very very good thing, but no longer entitled to the Shakespeare label.

And thus did actress Tracey-Anne Oberman move the ancient money-lender to Whitechapel in 1936. Why there and then? Because that was the inflammatory scene of the absolute pinnacle of British antisemitism, when ‘blackshirts’ under Oswald Moseley chose to march in full, pretty-much Nazi regalia, through the streets of London’s foremost Jewish ghetto. The police not only allowed this to happen, but decided, collectively, to stand back and make no intervention when the inevitable riots ensued. The blackshirts were blocked from their march as tram-drivers ‘parked’ their trams to obstruct, then hoardes of dockers arrived to stop them as well as thousands of local Jews intent on disrupting Sir Oswald. And rather successfully as the Nazi scum eventually were forced away. The event representing the end of official British anti-semitism right there and then. As many European countries, like Spain, Italy, Austria were embracing their Hitler-vibe, Moseley lost so much face at Cable Street that the blackshirts never gained the political traction they had appeared to be gaining before.

So that’s where ‘we’ set Merchant of Venice. And it was ok. Wasn’t brilliant but it was ok. Tracey-Anne herself played Shylock and quite well. Dressed in the ‘Jewish gaberdine’ of a 1930s Brit rather than a 1650s Eye-tie. Just not quite sure the merger of the two periods worked sufficiently well to do anything worthwhile.

Happy tuesday

A xxxx

Having failed miserably to unravel the financial situation at Manchester City, trying to work out which of ‘Abu Dhabi Investments’, ‘the investment company of Abu Dhabi’, Dhabi Abu Investments Inc.’ and ‘nothing to do with Abu Dhabi investments for the purposes of football accounting, plc’, are anything to do with each other, we now have an interesting situation at Newcastle. Where new owner, Yasir al-Rumayyan and his ‘PIF’ (Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund) have made an official and legally-binding declaration of total independence from the State of Saudi Arabia. Fair enough.

Yet in an American court, during the case about the LIV golfing tournament, that overly moneyed and obscenely extravagant Saudi event which has torn golf in two, it was declared that ‘Rumayyan and PIF are representatives of the Saudi government’. Because that way they don’t have to give evidence.

The legal term for this apparent duplicity is ‘slippery motherfuckas’. More often referred to as ‘can’t trust ‘em as far as you can fucking throw ‘em’.

Because if you can’t be honest in front of lawyers and judges, because it may become prejudicial to your intended money-laundering operations, then its a bad omen for the Premiere League, UEFA and FIFA who are the most stupid, gullible and corrupt organisations around.

This all looks good too for the Qatari bid for Manchester United. Another nation of impeccable moral standards and financial transparency. As long as those morals can be bought and the transparency hidden behind a curtain.

And I’m not saying that these problems are in any way uniquely associated with countries with human rights issues, where the inclusivity policy is conditional upon total compliance to a set of fucked up rules, where discrimination is state-sanctioned and where women are beaten daily as a matter of protocol and ‘good practice’. Not saying that at all.

I would talk about actual, like real football, like, played on a pitch and winners and (FUCKING!!!!) losers an’ stuff but, quite frankly, I don’t feel like it. I’m not feeling that particular vibe currently. No idea why. No idea why my alcohol consumption has quadrupled in the last 4 days either. Surely these can’t be connected???

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Mel always comments when, in a cabinet ‘reshuffle’, the minister for ‘diversity’ becomes the minister for education. But he/she knows NOTHING about that!!!, my wife cries. Then a week later he/she is the chancellor. Or minister for obesity and motor cars. And its true, they know precisely fuck all about their new specialist subject. And yet are mandated to make incredibly important decisions affecting the entire nation. Of course, that presumes that in their old role they actually ‘mastered’ that subject completely, which they didn’t. They don’t have to. The permanent civil servants know all and the minister is there to take their advice and act upon it. Even though they’re really completely unqualified to do so.

And thus we ended up, in the most pandemic of pandemics, saddled with Matt Hancock as Minister for Health. ‘He’s not a doctor!!!!’, shouted Mel at the tv. And he’s not. He’s a plonker. It was like having Joey as the Minister for Organisation. Or the Grand Imperial Wizard of the KKK given the Equalities portfolio. But Hancock was in the job and we just hoped he would do nothing more than listen to the actual doctors and civil servants and do their bidding.

He fucked up. Personally, professionally, ministerially. They all did. The whole government. Led by the fuck-up’s fuck-up, Boris Johnson.

Matt Hancock resigned after he mis-read the ‘2-metre’ distancing rule and was filmed in a clinch with his ‘assistant’, adhering to old line ‘if I was any closer I’d be inside you’. Poor Matt, who actually wrote that rule, said ‘I thought it was 2 MILLImetres!!! Sorry.’

So he published a book. About the pandemic. Which no-one read. No-one cared. No-one bought. But obviously a dim-wit like him couldn’t write it alone, he can barely read, so he teamed up with a ‘professional’ writer. And chose… Isabel Oakeshott. Someone to trust with all his secrets. And a good choice by Matt. Because Oakeshott had already proved her trustworthiness a decade earlier by publishing details in the Telegraph which eventually led to then Labour minister Chris Huhne, and his wife, Vicky Price, both ending up in jail.

And Matt ‘gave’ to Oakeshott his entire back catalogue of WhatsApp messages. Literally thousands of them. And being a disloyal, headline-seeking, journo-whore with no sense of betrayal or right-and-wrong, she published them in the Telegraph.

So let’s just take a look at the ‘average’ WhatsApper. Who is me.

If you looked at my messages on that vehicle, you would think me a misogynist, sexist, racist sociopath with homicidal tendencies, no concept of morality, decency or fairness, and possibly a Chelsea fan.

And I resent and deny ever being a Chelsea fan.

But WhatsApp is for bullshit. That’s why God invented it. It is NOT for anything serious or worthwhile, beyond ‘be there in 5’. Its for the sending of amusing stuff of a highly encrypted, sexist, racist, sociopathic nature. Ask any policeman. Yet within that context, it automatically becomes ironic in nature. Life is nuanced. Judgmental literalism misses that point entirely.

We already KNOW that Matt Hancock is a tosser and a liability. We don’t need to troll through his WhatsApp bollocks to prove it. When we should be working out how to get Isabel Oakeshott into the pillories so we can stone her to death for playing god and deciding what is ‘in the public interest’ when really its just ‘in the financial interests of the Daily Telegraph’.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

So yesterday, in a quiet moment at work, I was in discussion with ‘the film buff’ and the talk meandered round to Dustin Hoffman, as these things do. From my (rare) theatre visit to see him as Shylock in about nineteen eighty-something; the Merchant of Brooklyn. Accent didn’t really work. Little old Venetian Jew sounding like a Goodfella. Da qualidy of moiceee… Geraldine James as Portia was so brilliant it didn’t matter. And then to Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man and, of course, Rain Man. Tom Cruise’s undoubtable finest moment. When he changed from ‘grinning slimeball’ to ‘slimeball with a heart’. And a movie of such spectacularness it remains an all-time fave. Haven’t watched it in years.

After various activities last night, we finally watched the news, late (yes, its on ‘series record’ so I NEVER miss it). When it ended I shut down the recording and the tv went straight to Rain Man! I mean: whattttt??? Whatever channel that had been on before (I think BBC2) was showing Rain Man. LIVE.

We all know how creepy it is when you google something on your work computer and an hour later you open your personal phone and there’s seven ads for that same thing. But this was another league. We don’t have an Alexa at work, but I do at home, so the only explanation is that when I got home, Alexa read my mind, beamed it back to Beijing, along with the conversation we were having in the kitchen about whether Waitrose salted pistachio nuts are as good as the ones from the health food store, and Beijing then told the BBC due to an exchange of information arrangement they have, and ka-boom, Rain Man’s on tv that night. With a guaranteed audience of 1, for at least 10 minutes, until he goes to bed. I fully expected Sky tv to be on my doorstep this morning offering me Rain Man on pay-per-view, plus a Dustin Hoffman t-shirt, Tom Cruise (ugly) mug and other assorted ‘essentials’, for just an additional £2.99 per month!!! for the next 7 years.

There is no such thing as ‘coincidence’. Why would there be when ‘conspiracy’ is so much more fun.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

The prospect of a government-appointed ‘regulator’ for our Premier football league has caused concerns at FIFA. The proposal to have a body which SHOULD control how the teams and their owners ‘behave’, both financially and responsibly, whilst not joining new ‘superleagues’ and checking on the suitability of proposed club owners, may contravene FIFA’s article 15 concerning political interference in football.

So, to clarify: FIFA, the world’s governing body for football, is troubled by the politicising of our national game. Yet allowed a rogue nation of terrorist-funding human rights abusers to bribe its way to hosting a World Cup. In a death-inducing climate. At which it then colluded with the band of Sheikhs to ban mild statements of protest against the persecution of minorities. FIFA can just fuck off.

Ok, I really really loved this last World Cup, from a fan’s perspective. The football was just brilliant. Yet I realise that I still have some unresolved anger issues about it. Which, with my therapist, I’m working on. I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, the ‘gift’ that is Brexit moves into its next phase. Progress sounds like a series of Robert Ludlum books, as we move from ‘The Ireland Protocol’ to ‘The Windsor Framework’. Rishi Sunak plays Jason Bourne and Ursula von der Leyen is Julia Styles so obviously this is more about the kid getting sand kicked in his face than the beefy-dude bully, but most importantly, Rishi and Ursula seem really happy with this proposal, in a smugly, almost romantic kind of way. And with so much lurve, what could possibly go wrong? In steps notorious bad guy, the DUP! Oh no, not those really loud, preachy boys (and gels) from Belfast!!! They’ve brought the province to its knees by refusing to go to their parliament for 3 years and they won’t have nuffink of this ‘new deal’.

Will this keep Rishi and Ursula apart when every fibre of their (scrawny, little) bodies is crying out for lust? Only one man can save them; the King!!!! Let’s get him involved. Even though he is possibly the most inflammatory figure for half of Northern Ireland and really shouldn’t be involved in ‘ongoing politics’.

Wow, this is so good it may go to Netflix!

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

These are the 10 important things to remember about Chelsea:

1. I fucking hate them
2. I hate them more
3. They’re shit
4. I hate them
5. They’re violent and nasty
6. They can’t even get sent off properly
7. I hate them
8. Their manager needs to make the transition from ‘bemused’ to ‘sacked’.
9. Their entire ownership structure is horrible
10. I hate them.

So it was thus wearing my totally impartial and non-biased hat when I refused to sit down to watch Spurs play Chelsea yesterday lunchtime. I went out. Find those games unbearably difficult to watch. Yet I learned, that it was a game of two halves. The first half, in which no-one scored. And the second half, in which we scored. Chelsea didn’t but since being bought by the richest American since the last one and spending in one January transfer window an amount that would sustain the other 3 divisions of our league for two decades, they don’t win and they don’t score goals. Why should they? They don’t get paid any more to do so, so why would they? Cheek!

There was one exceedingly con-tra-ver-shiawl moment, I’ll relate it from my position as one of the league’s most accomplished referees. Even though I’m not. Yet still feel more accomplished than the geezer in black yesterday.

A fracas erupted after a poor challenge. If it was any other team(s) that would have been fine, but this was Spurs and Chelsea, so inevitably it turned into a ‘melee’, what you call a fight in which no-one’s allowed to actually punch anyone because you get sent off. But little Moroccan shit Ziyech hadn’t read that, or couldn’t find the translation into French or Arabic so punched sweetly innocent Emerson Royal. Who twenty seconds earlier barged into the Chelsea man from behind. But that is PERFECTLY LEGAL. And results in no sending off. Ziyech retaliated by punching Royal in the face. Which is definitely a sending off, but the ref, Stuart Attwell, didn’t see it. So as it settled down, Attwell received a call from the 4th official informing what Ziyech had done. At which point the ref. swiftly waved a red card in the slimy little Moroccan’s face. Justice done.

But wait, then the ref received another call, possibly from his mum, maybe from Todd Boehly, Chelsea’s new owner, telling him to look for himself at the incident. Which he did. We all did (even I was watching by then). And yes, the little bastard punched my dear wing-back in the face. But dear Steward decided it was ‘a shoulder push which just happened to end up in the guy’s face’ and so ‘removed’ his red card decision. Cancelled it. As if it meant nothing. Like it was an NHS hip replacement operation. What a tosser.

But we won. 2-nil. Which, however difficult it was to watch, is all that really matters.

Yours impartially

A xxxx

The leadership battle hots up, ‘up there’ in what is currently the northernmost extremity of Great Britain, though if they get their way, that title goes to Carlisle. Possibly Newcastle, need to get a map.

First we had ‘Katie-gate’, in which Kate Forbes was brutally exposed as… A CHRISITIAN!!! The worst thing you could ever be in a… errrrr… in a Christian country like Britain/Scotland. Because she’s too Christian. A touch too Mississippi for Dumfries and Oban, where they like their Christianity a little more liberal and inclusive than Ms Forbes would find acceptable. She did pull a Rees-Mogg who said, when he too was accused of being excessively Christian in a leadership race, that ‘he wouldn’t let his personal revulsion of gay marriage nor his abject disgust of abortion in any circumstances affect his political judgment in the wider social political context.’ His words may have been slightly different. But he was lying anyway. And it creates the impossible to believe situation in which you think one thing, with all your heart AND SOUL, yet are going to legislate in a completely opposite manner? Yeah, right.

Which is all in favour of Humza Yousaf who is, most certainly, no radical Christian, nor any other type of Christian whatsoever. He’s a Muslim. Ahhhh, that’s better, a religion famous for its tolerance, inclusivity, always receptive to modernity and concerned with women’s rights and gays. And although no radical type anything, nor a deeply religious man, he still consulted with the Muslim community leaders before abstaining on the gay marriage vote. “Ahhhh, I was busy that day”. And thus comes Humza-gate. Too influenced by Muslim mainstream doctrine and his community to rule in a ‘proper secular way’.

And for that you really need someone truly irreligious. Someone totally godless and more aligned to the devil himself. Someone like Boris. Although some concept of ‘morality’ and ‘decency’ might arguably be at least a minor virtue for a national leader.

Spurs playing Chelsea in 2 hours time. More stress.

Happy Sunday

A xxxxx

Its the anniversary of the war in Ukraine. Sorry, the ‘special military action, NOT WAR’, war in Ukraine. Depending on which side of the Donbas you sit. Or really, which side of Putin’s mind you sit. Because if you’re inside it (and good luck with that, holy shit!!!), you’re defending your country from the hostile and aggressive forces of Western Imperialism and their severe threat to the people of Russia. If you’re anywhere else, Putin’s a warmongering muthafucka who invaded a neighbouring country for no good reason then levelled it to the ground.

He amassed an army 200,000 strong and sent his tanks and missiles into a forrin country. How is that not ‘war’. He did it, apparently, because Ukraine threatened to join NATO and Putin fears having such a NATO-affiliated country so close. So thought it best just to destroy the entire country, all the buildings, power stations, bridges and anything else useful, plus killing as many civilians as his missiles could reach.

He has lost an estimated 50,000 soldiers. But that doesn’t really bother him, Russia has always fought its wars by throwing its population at the problem, and worry about the lack of men around later down the line. Men who might possibly work, procreate, hold up a shelf? Phah, who needs ’em?

He’s also spent countless billions. Which probably bothers him more. But only in as far as it might stop his not-war from continuing. Cruise missiles: million quid a ‘pop’, albeit quite a loud ‘pop’. Hundreds of tanks destroyed (by MY anti-tank missiles wot I paid for with MY taxes), at least 500 at a quarter million a tank. Bullets, food, lots and lots of bandages, say another few billion quid. And all for a nation sanctioned out of profit by export bans and with income streams severely reduced.

And I’m aware that Ukraine, as a nation, didn’t have the most appealing history, going back to some other ‘wars’ which were actually accepted by all as ‘wars’, but I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to all those who are truly ‘innocent’ civilians, just normal people trying to live ‘normal’, peaceful lives. Because what a year they’ve had. It makes Chelsea’s look almost trivial.

Happy Anniversary

A xxxx

Nicola Sturgeon is ‘istry’. Gone. In all but she’s still hanging around making a nuisance of herself in that ‘dead man walking’ kind’a way. Or perhaps ‘suicidal woman walking’ as she actually quit herself. And the leadership race is hotting up. In a rather tepid, low-key, never-eard-a-none-of-em sort of ‘hotting up’.

Favourite at the moment is Humza Yousaf, the man who puts ‘race’ into the leadership race. But he seems like a good guy. Decent and moderate, seems to have all his teeth, even though he’s Scottish.

Then there’s Ash Regan, bit of an outsider but I’d vote for her just because she’s got a bit of a Jessica Chastain vibe about her. Which can never be a bad thing. Sturgeon really lowered the bar for ‘looks’ in Holyrood and some may think this a trivial and relatively unimportant issue, but as I don’t get to vote, nor care who rules ‘up there’, its as good a variable as any for me. Until someone better comes along. Or better looking.

And then there’s Kate Forbes. The youngest, at 32, still officially on maternity leave, so we know she’s fertile, and an energetic and engaging speaker. BUT…

She’s a Christian! And with a really big ‘C’. The biggest you can imagine. She is to Scottish politics what the DUP is in Ireland. What the Taliban is to Afghanistan. A horribly regressive and ultra-conservative force, prioritising the bible over any kind of modernising societal reform. She’s anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, has issues with illegitimate births and don’t get her started on anything ‘trans’ or she genuflects and raises a cross. Which is arguably better than Sturgeon’s proposals on that subject but would the Scots really want a smiling, female Ian Paisley in the top role? I would say ‘God help us’, but appreciate its a bit inappropriate here.

Its all very exiting. Relatively.

As opposed to Liverpool last night, that was exiting in every sense of the word. Though the words on Klopp’s lips this morning would probably be more along the lines of “how the fuck did we do that????”

2-nil up after just 14 minutes and then went into total collapse mode and allowed Real Madrid to beat them 5-2. Quite amazing.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

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